SNOWFLAKE is a system-defined, read-only database provided by Snowflake. The database is automatically imported into each account from a share named ACCOUNT_USAGE. In this way, Snowflake utilizes
Data Sharing to provide metadata and other usage metrics for the objects in your account.

Set of views that display object metadata and usage metrics for your account.

READER_ACCOUNT_USAGE:

Set of views that display object metadata and usage metrics across all the reader accounts you’ve created as a Data Sharing provider. If you
have not created any reader accounts, these views are empty.

For the most part, these views are a subset of the views in ACCOUNT_USAGE, with each view containing an additional ACCOUNT column for filtering results by reader account.

The views in both schemas can be queried similar to any other views in Snowflake

Note

By default, only account administrators (users with the ACCOUNTADMIN role) can access the SNOWFLAKE database and schemas and perform queries on the views; however, privileges for these objects can
be granted to other roles in your account to allow users with the roles to access the objects.

The account usage views have some natural latency, due to the process of extracting the usage data from Snowflake’s internal metadata store. However, the views have been designed to minimize the impact
of this latency, based on the type of data displayed in the views:

For Runtime views, which display data that changes frequently/continually, the latency is limited to approximately 1 minute.

For Object and Analytic views, which display data that does not tend to change as frequently, the latency is a maximum of 1 hour.

For more details about each view, see the list of views (in this topic).

Tip

If the latency for a given account usage view is a concern, consider using the corresponding view/table function in the Information Schema. Information Schema views/table functions do
not have any latency, but they have shorter retention periods (for historical data) than the account usage views.

This section provides examples of some typical/useful queries using the views in ACCOUNT_USAGE.

Note

These examples assume the SNOWFLAKE database and the ACCOUNT_USAGE schema are in use for the current session. The examples also assume an appropriate role is in use. If they are not, execute the
following commands before running the queries in the examples: